Infant and Parent Shared Book Reading

Not Applicable

Completed

Conditions: Individual, Category, and No-label Conditions

Interventions: Behavioral: Book reading

Registration Number: NCT04337372

Lead Sponsor: University of Florida

Brief Summary: This work is guided by two specific aims and is expected to result in a better understanding of the effectiveness of shared book reading as a tool for supporting parent-infant interactions and infant learning across the first year of life. This work determined the extent to which books with individually-named characters (e.g., "Boris", "Fiona") increases parent-infant joint attention and infant selective attention relative to books with generic labels (e.g., "Bear", "Bear") or no labels and whether attention differs by age. During infant-parent shared book reading joint attention was measured using dual eye-tracking. Infants and parents then returned to the lab the next day and infant selective attention and infant-parent neural synchrony was measured using EEG.

Detailed Description: Shared book reading has been found to have broad developmental benefits for language, socio-emotional and cognitive development. However, the effects of shared book reading on infant development are not well understood. Although healthcare professionals and educators ask parents to read books to their infants early and often, the book reading experience itself has never been systematically investigated in infancy. This work is guided by two specific aims and is expected to result in a better understanding of the effectiveness of shared book reading as a tool for supporting parent-infant interactions and infant learning across the first year of life. The primary aim of the proposed work is to determine the extent to which books with individually-named characters (e.g., "Boris", "Fiona") increases parent-infant joint attention and infant selective attention relative to books with generic labels (e.g., "Bear", "Bear") or no labels and whether attention differs by age. To address the aim of this project, a cross-sectional sample of 6-, 9-, and 12-month old infants and their parents came to the laboratory and read a book that includes three distinct character labeling conditions (individual names, generic category labels, no label). During infant-parent shared book reading joint attention was measured using dual eye-tracking. Infants and parents then returned to the lab the next day and infant selective attention and infant-parent neural synchrony was measured using EEG frequency tagging while infants and their parent viewed familiar characters across labeling conditions as well as unfamiliar characters. This project determined the extent to which parent-infant shared book reading impacted infant attention, parent-infant joint attention, EEG power, and parent-infant EEG synchrony.

Recruitment & Eligibility

Status: COMPLETED

Sex: All

Target Recruitment: 146

Inclusion Criteria

Infants will be included if they are typically developing and between 5.5 and 12.5 months of age, as well as their caregiver.
Parents 18-65 years old

Exclusion Criteria

Infants who were born more that 14 days premature.
Infants who with a history of neurological or visual deficits.
Infants with a history of seizures or a disorder that includes risk of seizures.
Infants with a parent that has a history of seizures of a disorder that includes risk of seizures.
Parents with a history of seizures or a disorder that includes risk of seizures.

Study & Design

Study Type: INTERVENTIONAL

Study Design: PARALLEL

Arm && Interventions

Group	Intervention	Description
Effects of shared book reading	Book reading	There will be one arm since all participants will undergo the same intervention.

Primary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Infant Visual Attention	Day 1	Infant visual attention was measured for all 3 conditions using head mounted eye-tracking. Duration of visual attention (total duration of infant visual fixations greater than 100 ms each, to the book during shared book reading) was measured within a spatial window of the scene. Proportations of visual attention to the book were calculated by dividing attention duration to the book by the total task duration
Infant EEG Steady-state Evoked Potential Frequency Tagging Power	On Day 2	To examine the extent to which infant EEG power, as measured by the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) was modulated by label condition and age, data were extracted from a mid-occipital cluster of Oz and its 6 nearest neighbors (channels 70, 71, 74, 75, 76, 82, 83) for each of the conditions by age group.

Secondary Outcome Measures

Name	Time	Method
Infant and Parent EEG Synchrony	On Day 2	Infant and parent EEG synchrony (as a dyad) was quantified and compared across conditions. We used a phase-locking index to quantify EEG dyadic synchrony across conditions. The phase-locking index measures the extent to which the parent and infant oscillatory response is in the same phase across time. This index is bounded between 0 and 1, with 1 being perfect synchrony.
Parent-Infant Visual Joint Attention	On Day 1	Parent and infant visual attention (as a dyad) was measured across conditions using dual parent and infant head mounted eye-tracking. Duration of joint attention (periods of overlap of parent and infant visual fixations to the book during shared book reading) was measured within a spatial window of the scene. Proportions of joint attention were calculated by dividing joint attention duration by the total task duration.